3 Myths about Industrial Workplace Safety That Refuse to Die

“Safety First” has always been the battle cry of industrial sites the world over. While each workplace involves a certain level of risk, everybody agrees that such risk is potentially life-threatening. Heights, heavy machinery, toxic chemicals, noise pollution; a single mishap could lead to costly and irreversible consequences.

As a manager, keeping your workers out of harm’s way should be your top priority. Not only injuries have operational and financial implications, but they could also turn someone’s life upside down forever.

To effectively prevent fatal accidents from occurring, it pays to find out the truth behind the most common assumptions when it comes to implementing safety practises around industrial environments:

More Protection Increases Safety

By all means, wearing personal safety equipment save lives, or at least mitigate the impact of accidents. As every environment present a unique set of risks, putting on the right set of PPE keep your workers away from dangers that are otherwise unavoidable.

However, focusing primarily on protection only helps boost your level of survival in case of accidents, but not reduce the risk of accidents to begin with. Identifying the present hazards and managing it intelligently should be the foundation of your safety practises.

Minimising Workplace Hazards Is Time-Consuming

In reality, you can spot every potential hazard in the environment efficiently if your workers have clearly defined guidelines to follow. The Take Five Safety checklist is the perfect example to identify even the smallest form of danger in industrial sites within just five minutes. Contrary to popular belief, developing such a routine to increase safety awareness of your workers would even streamline your operations—with lesser risks of accidents.

Human Error Is the Root of All Accidents

This is true to some extent, but if you just blame everything to the shortcomings of your workers, you’re essentially exposing your team to the inherent dangers in the environment. Machines sometimes have a mind of their own, while the weather can make working conditions unfavourable.

Safety awareness is more complicated than you think. Instead of basing your practises to mere beliefs, invest on intuitive materials even your least smart worker can easily understand.